


The Less I Know The Better

by grumpynymph



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Break Up, F/M, M/M, allusions to some fuckin' & some truckin', rise of the project, vital lack of communication
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 08:10:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19314133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpynymph/pseuds/grumpynymph
Summary: You should have seen this coming. You should have stopped this. It's too late now.





	The Less I Know The Better

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation of my 'breaking up with the seed men' series. This one's gonna be a little longer! Let me know what you think.

You didn’t know how long you had been sitting in your truck, knuckles white against the steering wheel. The sun had gone down while your mind span round and round and round, casting long shadows across the sky that consumed the last traces of day. House lights went off and street lamps switched on, leaving you leaned back against the headrest, staring at your dashboard in the dark. You had reached for the keys in the ignition to either turn them or take them out half a dozen times, but your hand always went right back to where it started, holding onto that steering wheel as if it were the last thing keeping your grounded on God’s green earth.

The project had been an idea years- maybe decades in the making, that much you knew. Jacob had never talked about it much, and you used to be fine with that. You had met Joseph, John and Faith a few times in passing; who hadn’t? They were odd maybe, but you didn’t worry.

It had started slow- a small Bible study-type group, doing events and community service. You didn’t mind it; you liked it, really. Religion had never been your thing, but the thought of having something to believe in was comforting. For a while, your _something_ had been Jake. Now you weren’t so sure.

A few months ago was when you first noticed things felt off. Hope county’s land was being bought up at a frightening rate- John Seed strutting around in his fancy shoes to offer old farmers and quiet families more money than they’d ever seen in their life to hand over their acres, growing his kingdom in the valley, in the mountains. The project was growing too- at a frightening rate. Men and women left jobs they had worked for years and years to flock towards a man who had, just a few years ago, been an interim pastor, a wayward friend of Jerome’s given a place in the community. From what you heard they weren’t on speaking terms anymore, not after his daughter left home to join the church of Joseph.

But not everyone was peachy with the idea of a group lead by near-strangers making Hope County their home. People talked and people spat, using their old rural pride to push back against a Georgian religious annex. Fights broke out in the spread eagle and in the middle of the street between the divided ‘two sides.’ You had the privilege of being the one sent by Earl over to sort it all out, pushing drunk and angry citizens away from each other with the weak threat of a pair of arrests.

You could remember the first time you brought it up. The routine was always the same- no need for a phone call. You just pulled your truck into his drive after work. If he was home, he’d be sitting out on the porch; skinning game or whittling or drinking a cup of coffee. If he wasn’t, you had your key. That night he was leaning against the rail, his mug in his hands. He didn’t wave as you parked on the grass, grainy engine rumbling to stop and lights switching off, just stared. You waited then too, for just a moment, staring back, before you popped the door open and your boots hit green still wet from the morning rain.

“Hey,” he had said from his place on the porch as you approached. Crickets sang their songs in the dark, moths and mosquitoes dancing around the lamp that cast a glow across his face.

“Hey yourself,” you had answered. You pulled the screen door open and he followed you inside.

Jacob’s house was small- a one-bedroom with an AC system that predated the cold war. You suspected John had tried to buy him some big fancy property and he refused.

“Can I have one of those?” you nodded to his cup, and he grunted in response, opening a cupboard with one hand and grabbing the coffee pot with the other. He knew how you liked it: strong brewed with a splash of rum. Tiramisu without the tiramisu, you always said. Soon enough it was in your hands and you were looking at him above the mug. He looked right back.

“Good day, huh?” he asked, and you frowned.

“What?”

“You’re usually all over me by now,” he held up his mug and you could feel heat creeping across your face. You took another sip. “Don’t have enough stress to relieve to need it _that_ bad, isn’t that right?”

“I got plenty of stress, Jacob,” you knocked back the rest of your drink, feeling the rum burn steady at the back of your throat.

“You wanna talk about it?” he asked, some tease painting the underbelly of his tone.

“Fuck, no.”

The aftermath always left you trying to catch your breath, fist buried in gray linen sheets. At first he had expected you to get up and get out, and you had been fine with that. That’s all it had been then, a good fuck and you were on your way. Now it was different. He raked your hair back from your face as you felt your heartbeat slow, wrapping a large arm around your waist. No loving words were spoken, but little motions betrayed some form of affection. The way he pulled you closer, the way he relaxed against you, the way he sighed into your hair. Silence overtook the both of you, but your eyes were wide open in the dark, mind working.

“Jake?” the word slipped from your lips before you could stop it. He didn’t stir, staying where he was, but when you pushed yourself up to face him he was staring at you, waiting for you to continue. You could feel your heartbeat again.

“Some people in town were talking- about your brother. Joseph, his.. group. Said he drowned Jerome’s daughter in the river. Maybe by mistake or-” you cut yourself off, a shrug pulling your shoulders up. _Tell me what’s going on_ , your eyes said.

“And you believed that?” he paused for a moment, as if he were expecting you to make a joke. His scoff grated on your ears, incredulousness in his face. “ _No_ , pup. My brother didn’t drown the pastor’s kid.”

“I checked around and no one’s seen her,” you said quietly, meeting his gaze. Almost a challenge. Almost. “No news about her moving either.”

“You think I’d lie to you?” he had asked, leaning back to look at your face fully. His expression was unreadable, still and serious. You had wavered for a moment, lost in blue eyes, before you said _no, of course not_. Before you had pulled his arms back around you and laid facing the wall so he didn’t see the storm knocking at your skull.

They killed Danny, Joey’s partner. That was the news you had woken up to in the morning, months later. You didn’t know how it had gone this far, how it had spiraled out of their control. Every case that came to the sheriff’s office seemed to be turned down by Earl, and Danny’s was no exception. Yelling filled the worn whitewashed walls of the sheriff’s department for the first part of the day, and silence filled the rest. The quiet was more deafening than Joey Hudson’s words. She had stormed out to smoke, cry, punch a wall or do all three, and Earl had made his way out into the office space as the meager staff looked on. “There’s work to do,” was all he said before he turned back around, sighing like the old man he was. “You won’t let us _do it_ ,” Staci Pratt had muttered under his breath.

You didn’t know what the fuck to do. A whirlwind consumed your mind as you sat at your desk, flipping through file after file after file of rejected cases, of warning signs you had ignored. All that land bought up, all those people, the whispers of drugs being produced, of executions being carried out. Jacob’s silence no longer seemed like privacy; it screamed secrecy.

No one stopped you when you left your desk, pushing open the front doors to find your way to your truck. You thought it was a trick of the light when you saw Nancy smiling in the reflection of the glass.

Joey was sitting against the hood of her car, a cigarette burning in her hand. Four more were stamped out on the gravel by her feet. Her eyes were red-rimmed and unfocused, looking towards the mountains on the horizon.

 _“She’s gonna blame herself,”_ Staci had told you on the phone. _“But it’s not her fault, it was that fucking cult.”_

“Hey,” you tried to start, but she only shook her head, waving you away. You didn’t push. When Joey Hudson didn’t want to talk, she didn’t talk.

Nothing seemed real as you drove across roads you had navigated your entire life. You remembered Danny setting down a cup of coffee on your desk yesterday, striking up some small talk you couldn’t recall, hands on his hips. He had been charismatic, confident, and so, so damn stubborn. You suppose that’s what got him killed.

 _“I think he found out something about them-”_ Staci had said. _“I don’t know what. I don’t know if I wanna know what. But they needed it to say secret.”_

 _Secrets_ were something Hope County had no short supply of.

Before you knew it, you were sitting in your driveway, hands on the steering wheel, engine off. You didn’t go inside. You just sat, and thought, and thought, and looked at the brown door of your garage. The stack of files sat in your passenger’s seat. Lists upon lists of accusations against the man you were sleeping with and his family. It would be easier to just go inside. To believe the man you were realizing you knew nothing about. It would be easier to let Earl persuade you that there’s nothing to be done. But what was easy sure as fuck wasn’t what was _right_.

You turned the key, and your truck’s engine rumbled to life.

  



End file.
